To start????????

I don't think so somehow. The only place I have ever been offered drugs (yeah, yeah, sheltered life and all that) was Camden Market, and there are a lot of very dodgy characters around there. I admit it's a rich mine of potential material, but I think it would be a while before I'd chance my arm (the one with the K10D at the end of it) there.

Actually, I'd be very interested indeed, ta.

I watched the repeat of this last night, and I was amazed at the way the bald guy (can't remember his name) got away with standing in the middle of the street, getting right in the faces of people he was photographing.

What's that all about then? Do pro photographers have a Harry Potter Cloak of Invisibility or something? I can't imagine clicking away with a camera being that inconspicuous.

Nope, I already knew that word.

Did it have to start in a camera?

We had a thread a while back where we had to determine which pictures were 'real' and which were generated entirely by rendering software on a computer.

Some of them were damn difficult to tell.

When you look at a scene, your eye's iris opens up and closes down, effectively spot metering for each bit of the scene you look at. So the brain forms an HDR composite of what the eye has recorded.

So my take on these is that if they're natural, like Ammonyte's woodland one a week or two back, they're absolutely fine, and arguably more natural than a single exposure.

Well, among other reasons, when it's two photos.

So I take two rubbish photos, one with a crap sky, and the other with some nasty, distracting, badly composed foreground. I post them both here, and John and George rightly tear into me, leaving me mauled, yet strangely invigorated.

However, I take the sky from one, and by cunning and dextrous use of the mouse, manage cleverly to slap the one over the top of the other.

I post that, and you all tell me how marvellous it is.

It just feels like cheating to me.

It'll be great if they remove the strike against you.

But it's very disappointing that they'll take no action against the seller. If sellers can get away with accusing people of non-payment, when eBay themselves have seen the proof that the accusation is spurious, there's nothing stopping them from continuing to act in that manner.

If you run a mail order business, you have no choice but to streamline your whole packaging operation so that the time it takes to pack the thing up is short.

Because otherwise, the hourly rate "nonsense" becomes very important, since time spent packing things is not spent doing other things.

The reason businesses can send lenses for very little more than the cost of the postage is that they have done that streamlining, probably mostly by economies of scale, which I'm sure you understand.

Obviously, Joe Public, flogging the occasional item on eBay isn't going to be able to charge for shipping and handling what it actually costs him, unlike a business that has no choice but to do exactly that, and has the flexibility to pass the costs on to the customers in a variety of ways that are mostly unnoticeable.

In the immortal words of Robert Heinlein, there ain't no such thing as a free lunch.

I do agree with this. I just think the way some react to a few quid over the odds for the shipping is a bit excessive.

I suspect that it's not so much the few quid difference, but the frustration with the communication, the worry about getting the thing at all, and the worry about the inevitable huge additional hassle should anything go wrong with it.

I guess that an excessive postage charge for 2nd class carriage is an indicator of the levels of service to be expected in other areas.

I expect I could speed up the process with more practice.

But by the time I've printed out the invoice, wrapped up the item carefully in bubblepack, arranged more bubblepack in the box, placed the wrapped item in the box, put more bubble pack on top, taped the box up with the invoice inside, ensured I've spelled the address right, walked down to the Post Office, filled in the Signed-For or Special Delivery form, queued up for at least 10 minutes, stuck the bits on the weighed package, and walked back from the Post Office, it's at least an hour, more like an hour and a half, usually.

What's that in minimum wage terms?